


The raven dreams of its shadow

by bramblebelle



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Blood Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, House Greyjoy, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, euron is one evil mf
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25939957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblebelle/pseuds/bramblebelle
Summary: Brynden Rivers undertakes the tricky mission of appointing a successor.
Relationships: Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers/Shiera Seastar
Kudos: 5





	1. The Kraken

**Author's Note:**

> Had the idea for this while rereading ASOIAF and Dunk and Egg for the first time in years. Fair warning- a lot of this fic will be based on filling in gaps that we don't get so much info about in-series, so headcanons ahoy! I'm new to Ao3 and not 100% sure about tags and the such, so lemme know if there's anything i should be doing.
> 
> This first chapter was inspired by the fan theory that Euron Greyjoy is a failed protege of the Three-eyed crow, and by some of the implications of Aeron the Drowned Priest's chapters.

**[279 AC]**

On the edge of the beach, a boy prayed. His muttered words would indeed be heard by a god of sorts, albeit not the one they had been addressed to. On that lonely Pyke beach, a raven hopped amidst the seaweed.

Aeron prayed and prayed that the god would take his brother. He shared this with no-one. His father and Balon and Victarion would’ve beat him for such monstrous thoughts of kinslaying- not Urrigon though. Urri was different. It did not need to be spoken for him to know that Urri would’ve matched his every prayer, had he not already given up on the Drowned God’s blessings.

These pilgrimages to the water had become habit, ever since Euron had returned to Pyke from Essos a fortnight before, gibbering with fever below decks as his second-in-command had steered the Silence home. Aeron had quietly witnessed Euron stumbling down the hallway with the assistance of Maester Dale , his left eye swollen and oozing some foul substance. He had remained in his quarters since, visited by a procession of maesters called from every castle in the Iron Islands after Dale’s remedies had failed to stem the sickness. Lord Quellon was known as a man who took no half measures, and who believed in borrowing from the ways of the Green lands whenever they might be used to help Iron Islanders. He even called upon an old thrall from Harlaw (from the days of Aeron’s grandfather, when taking thralls had still been allowed) who claimed to have been a novice maester from Oldtown in his previous life. No matter, Euron showed no improvement, and (as Aeron gleaned from the whispered conversations of servants), he even got worse.

Aeron walked on the shore below his home every day, and whispered in time to the beating waves. He said every word he could think of, not being one accustomed to much prayer before this. He spoke as he would to his lord father, and then as he would to his closest friend. He even muttered an apology for the time he and Vic had amused themselves on the walls of Pyke by raining stones down on a Drowned Priest performing his rites. _A creaking doorhinge- his brother’s hand-_ Aeron whispered that bit louder. The Drowned God was just. 

* * *

_(On a moonless night, the crow broke through the membrane of his mind for the last time. Euron had been visited before, had been shown things. Sights beyond even what he had witnessed on this first journey to Essos. The feeling of flight in his dreams had stayed with him as he squinted through the smoke of strange temples, as he felt his blood surge while he cut down such cattle as inhabited his reaving-grounds. Even as he had laughed, shearing through the meat of the Lyseni wretch who had attempted to take his life as he took her. Euron had continued to laugh as the woman managed to catch a glancing slash to his face before expiring at the slash of his blade and had laughed as his wound festered, and had laughed all the more in his delirium belowdecks._

_It all ended up here, he knew as the crow carried him above that bleak blankness, into that terrible light. But this time, he found himself falling, falling…. It was all he could do to pull himself back to himself. He would not be crushed like a nut on the rocks, he would not be stranded here, he would NOT-_

_The last thing he recalled was the shadow of those wings, far above, fleeing into the blank blue. And then the blue faded to grey, and he found himself looking at the stone ceiling above him.)_

* * *

That evening, Maester Dale came before Lord Quellon Greyjoy to share the good news that his second son had shown a notable improvement in his condition. The fever had lifted, and the wound had responded to the poultices he had painstakingly applied. The maester predicted that Euron would be recovered within a moon’s turn, and had already expressed his plans to return the Silence to the waves again, with himself in his rightful place at the helm.

Lord Blacktyde and his retinue had arrived to discuss matters of trade with Aeron’s lord father, and a feast had been planned for their guests, which now doubled as a celebration of the health of the Greyjoy family. As the Drowned God decreed, “ What is dead may never die.”

In the hall, that night, Aeron grabbed a flagon of strong wine that Victarion had left forgotten, immersed in an argument with Baelor Blacktyde. He drank deeply. It was his first time, and yet he scarcely noticed the bitterness as it passed his lips. The wine turned to dregs and out came the blades, as men played out their boasts in the finger dance. Around and around the knives whirled, until around and around the world spun in time with them.# Aeron watched silently.

 _A doorhinge creaked._ He reached for the flagon once more.

* * *

Thousands of miles and thousands of minds away, old flesh stirred concealing a troubled mind. The time was not ripe. This was no worthy successor. The search must need continue.


	2. Roots

**[281 AC?]**

A knife across the throat- the writhing of limbs- the slow tangible leak of life dying the white of his roots indelible red-

Brynden has surrendered to this part in thousands of sacrifices. He has tasted the life of as many men as beasts (the sacrifices vary depending on the time and place the worshippers reside in), but no matter the details, the tang of blood always draws _him_ out. One loses oneself to the trees, but even so, the savagery of these rituals disturbs him somewhat. He had once prayed beneath that great dead trunk, as a boy at Raventree Hall, but those he had once called family had not resorted to such bloodshed in their worship. Of course, in his former life he had been no stranger to less-than-clean methods of achieving his desires, but there were deeper parts of him that had not yet been eroded by the role he had assumed in this cave, let alone his years in King’s Landing.

Sometimes, a faint memory returns- he can identify it as one of his own, although he stopped drawing such firm distinctions some time ago. He recalls his sisterlover Shiera, and the stories the smallfolk (and some of the less prudent nobles) would mutter of her alleged proclivities for bathing in maidens’ blood. Brynden had first heard this fable while under a glamour in a Gulltown tavern. A group of sailors had sworn “t’ lady Sharra” (their coarse accents mangled her name- Brynden had an eye for such details, as they served him well in lending the ring of truth to his disguises) preserved her famed beauty through this barbarism.

He remembered even clearer the amusement in her eyes when he recounted the rumour to her, as they lounged in his private chamber in the Tower of the Hand. She had wryly dismissed the story, asking him if he _really_ thought she needed to resort to such tricks to augment her beauty. She lay stretched out before him in the candlelight, and Brynden had been in no position to argue.

Now it was Brynden who had bathed in blood, hundreds of times washing over him- the tree- him.

*****

Time swept and flowed through him. If he let its tides move him, and exercised no control over his drift through the trees, he found they had a certain intention of their own. Like attracts like, is how he thought of it. He found himself drawn to certain events, certain people, over and over. Brynden imagined that this was how his predecessor had first found him- he could not imagine that the life of a Targaryen bastard, however famous and infamous in his own right, would hold much of an interest to that wizened old Child of the Forest he had just managed to stop himself from recoiling from at first sight. That had been so long ago, when he had arrived at this cave ( _this grave)_ he now knew all too well.

He had been more bark than flesh, attended on by his kin, his whispers translated by that golden-eyed Child that had been sent to meet Brynden in the Riverlands years before. He had pondered the peculiar dreams he had been sent, and scoured the records of the maesters (paltry, they were- lacking in imagination or even respect for anything that lay outside their minds addled by Sept incense and dogmatism). This Child had not been able to give him the clarity he desired, but their meeting had been enough. He knew there existed things outside of the trifles of King's Landing. It was a piece of knowledge that sustained him through his time in the dungeons.

As it turned out, she was the only one of her kind who spoke the Common Tongue- a demand that had been made of her so as to accommodate Brynden himself. Brynden’s time in King’s Landing had left him more than able to sniff out hostility when it lay hidden behind courtesy and curtseys. As it turned out, this was not a skill that was necessary in the cave. The Child- Leaf, she went by, having an untranslatable true name- made no secret of the fact that they only called on a human out of desperation. Their numbers were small, she eventually admitted, and no Singer had been born in many years whom the gods had seen fit to bless with the Sight.

However wide the gulf was between Brynden and his predecessor, united they were in ability and dedication. This was Brynden’s biggest trial now- finding someone who satisfied those two conditions. He had considered the Greyjoy man, who had some of the latent talent that occasionally seemed to crop up in the older families of the Seven Kingdoms. But could he be trusted? Someone more…. _pliable_ than Euron Greyjoy would serve much better.

As he travelled along in the wake of all those seers who had come before, some part of him that remained _Brynden_ judged that the next greenseer should be more of a Daeron than an Aegor.

*****

The chill loomed in the north, but still his sight was pulled southwards, where spring bloomed again. The men would deem it a short spring, a False one, in time, but how long did any season seem, to the trees? The Children had their season, and the Dragons too, and that would end in its turn. A woodswitch had been granted dreams, and the words she spoke had seeded duty in a prince. _This is how it must be._


End file.
